


Thou sleep'st so sound

by Meredydd



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Gen, Gift Fic, Implied Relationships, M/M, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-06
Updated: 2013-06-06
Packaged: 2017-12-14 04:19:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,845
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/832663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Meredydd/pseuds/Meredydd
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(a fic for Alltoseek, who bid on my writing in the AO3 fundraiser auction)</p><p>Based loosely on What Dreams May Come, at a request from Alltoseek.  Sherlock makes the trek between Hampstead Heath and 221 Baker Street every day, it seems, and it's always hatefully bright and cold.  His new landlady insists that he needs to rest, but Sherlock can't stand the hateful brightness of London these days.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Thou sleep'st so sound

**Author's Note:**

  * For [alltoseek](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alltoseek/gifts).



> The title comes from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar.
> 
> The fic is loosely based on the themes from the movie What Dreams May Come.

 

Sherlock stretched his legs towards the water. Hampstead Heath was surprisingly quiet—no tourists, no families save for a few small groups in the distance, and the only couple to be seen was huddled together in the grass a good distance away, whispering and touching, occasionally laughing loud enough for the sound to catch on the breeze and waft his way. The Mixed Pond, the Ladies' Pond and the Men's Pond had been closed, the faint rumble of movement audible past the gates, so Sherlock had treked up Parliament Hill to the Lido and found it, blissfully, empty save for the bare handful of people, leaving him alone with his thoughts. <i>Hateful.</i> Sherlock stared down at his bare feet and frowned, repeating the word aloud. “If John were here,” he said after a moment, voice echoing, “he would tell me to stop sulking.” He dipped his toes into the cold water and frowned. Everything was cold, despite the bright, cloudless sky and proliferation of summer foliage on the trees around the heath. “Probably on another boring date,” he muttered, sliding his legs in up to his knees. Sherlock felt the intense chill but noted a lack of _cutis anserina_ on his exposed skin. Above, the sun shone mercilessly, bright and searing against his closed lids as Sherlock tipped his head back. Bright but cold. The laughter in the distance sounded once more, but it was an echo, as well. _Why are we echoing? We're in the open air. This is maddening_.

Sherlock could only take so much nature. He let himself back into 221 after traversing quiet streets—only one taxi passed him during his walk back to the flat, and absolutely no tourists—and frowned at the new layout. The landlady, Mrs. James, had assured him that it had been Mrs. Hudson's fondest desire to rearrange the flat. Mrs. James had taken it upon herself to execute Mrs. Hudson's wish upon assuming ownership of 221 Baker Street from the Hudson estate, enlarging windows to allow more natural light. The kitchen was gleaming stainless steel and bright, white tile. The side-by-side fridge, also stainless, hummed quietly in the corner and the glass-front cupboards showed stacks of unused dishes and beakers, as well as his glassware for his experiments. The skull grinned nervously at him from above the re-stoned fireplace. The wallpaper remained the same but, somehow, brighter. It made Sherlock's head ache. Everything made his head ache. The lack of crime, the quiet, the light, the lack of anything other than the damned cold... He yanked open the freezer door and stared at the stacks of neatly labeled remains, bags of blood and, on the top shelf, ready-made meals. “I thought,” Mrs. James said from behind him, “you might eventually feel peckish.”

Sherlock turned on his heel, leaving the freezer open behind him. “What did you do with John's room?”

Mrs. James paused in fiddling with the hem of her cardigan and looked up, not quite meeting Sherlock's gaze. “Pardon?”

“You rearranged the flat, expanded and rebuilt... What about upstairs?”

“Hmm. I'm not sure what you mean.”

Sherlock narrowed his eyes and stepped closer, forcing Mrs. James to look at him with her watery, pale eyes. “Mrs. James, you may play at being obtuse, but I have many years of practice in recognizing idiots who are stupid and idiots who think they can trick me. Often the two groups intersect, but, in your case, you are in the latter group. What. Happened. To. John's. Room?”

Mrs. James drew herself up to her full height and scowled. “Sherlock Holmes, you have not been here long enough to take that tone with me. After the stunt you pulled, you should be happy anyone is speaking to you at all, much less me.” Without another word, she marched past him, out the open pocket door and down the stairs to A.

“Oh, what fresh hell is this,” Sherlock groaned, fisting his hands in his hair and pulling, wanting pain but receiving none.

  


The Lido was empty again. And cold. No gooseflesh rose on Sherlock's limbs as he slipped further in, this time up to his hips. He supposed, eventually, he would submerge entirely, but for now, hip deep seemed enough. The distant figures seemed even moreso today, and no laughter drifted closer on the breeze. He couldn't quite put his finger on why it was so strange, for him to be so alone, but he didn't like it at all. Even the skull was poor company, he reflected, staring down at his toes through the clear water.

“You'll catch your death,” a newly familiar voice echoed from across the pool. Mrs. James, in her beige cardigan and violet skirt, stood, hands clasped behind her back, frowning. “It's not fit for swimming here.”

“It's a swimming pool, Mrs. James,” he reminded her, pushing himself out of the pool and looking for his towel. “What else would one do with it?”

“Let it rest.” She walked carefully around the edge of the water, eyeing the depths with an almost stern glare. “Pools stopped being on my list of favorite places several years ago,” she admitted, stopping just out of arm's reach. “You need to take care, Sherlock.”

“Did you come all the way from Baker Street to tell me that?” He raised a brow, tucking the towel about his hips. “You're quite involved, for a landlady.”

Her lips tightened into a thin line. “You're not well, Sherlock. I'm taking care of you.”

The argument was at once familiar and strange—Mycroft, Mrs. Hudson, Lestrade, John...They had all claimed the same thing. They had all tried, in their ways... His head throbbed and the cold stole into his bones. “Where are they,” he murmured, words clotting in his throat. “How did you come to buy 221 again?”

Mrs. James sighed and laid a hand, surprisingly firm and warm, against Sherlock's arm. “Come on, love, let's get you back home.”

  
  


Sherlock barely remembered the walk back to the flat. He blinked and shivered, and Mrs. James was making him tea, presenting it to him in a shining-new RAMC mug. Sherlock's fingers convulsed short of the handle, his mouth going dry. In the pouring sunlight, he could pick out the fine detail of Mrs. James' hand on the mug, the veins and scars and neatly short nails curled around the ceramic, unflinching despite the heat, the steam rising from the mug. “Where did you get the mug, Mrs. James?”

“The cupboard,” she laughed, shaky and frail for just a flickering second. “There's loads of them in there. Mrs. Hudson gathered them all up after...after. She said they were all over, hidden under furniture, left on the worktop...” her voice trailed off. “You're not well, Sherlock. You need to rest.”

Sherlock took the mug from Mrs. James' hands and set it on the polished, unmarred surface of the coffee table. The brilliant light spilling in from the undraped windows bounced off the stainless steel, the white tiles, even the glinting pin at Mrs. James' collar, making Sherlock's head throb in time with his ( _fa_ _st, thready, abnormal)_ pulse. “How long ago did I move back, Mrs. James?”

“What a silly question.”

“Mrs. James...” Sherlock closed his eyes, but the light still glared brightly, flooding his skull with orange light, with flashing red and blue, with a rush of red.

“Have you seen the upstairs yet, Sherlock?” she asked softly, her voice different, rougher, tired and low. “I haven't.”

“How could you not? You're the new landlandy, the owner...” Sherlock forced his eyes open and found Mrs. James sitting in John's chair, the one that had remained empty for...for how long, now? He had been waiting to hear from John, from anyone, but John above all.. His phone never rang, never buzzed with a text, never flashed a message. His laptop was closed and on the partners desk near the glaring, overlarge, hideously clear window where the sun never set. “I...I am confused,” he admitted slowly. “I went to Hampstead Heath...” Mrs. James did not encourage, merely stared and waited, fingers gripping the arms of John's chair bloodlessly. “I came here.”

“Yes,” she whispered. “What else, Sherlock?”

He shook his head, pressing his face into his palms and groaning by way of an answer. He inhaled the cold, sharp tang of asphalt and formaldehyde from his hands and jerked upright. Something was gnawing, scraping at the throb in his skull. Something he needed to know, something that was staring him in the face. “I need to go upstairs.” Mrs. James nodded once, sharply, and folded her hands across her lap. Sherlock lurched to his feet and the cold throb became a steady ache, a pain that threatened to send him to his knees as he forced himself to walk to the stairs. It only grew worse as he managed each step, sending auras through his vision until he could only see fractured light, bright and cold. His feet found the steps by memory, but he still tumbled onto his hands and knees when he reached the landing outside John's door. “No,” he growled, “I will not be brought low by some idiotic illness!”

“You're not well,” Mrs. James repeated from the foot of the stairs. “Just rest, Sherlock, and let me help you.”

“Shut up!” he shouted, reaching blindly for the doorknob. He heaved himself to his feet and shoved the door open at the same time, staggering into John's room. The auras receeded, but the pain did not. The space was a shambles. It looked as if it had been torn apart by a wild beast, from the torn duvet on the floor to the broken picture frames and tumble of books scattered on every flat surface. Atop it all sat the gun, gleaming bright and beckoning.

“Why haven't you been up here, Mrs. James?” Sherlock heard himself, flat and low, threatening but scared. “Why is this room a tip? Where's John now?”

“I'm not allowed up here,” she said with a soft sigh. “You never let me in here. After...after, you closed the door and wouldn't unlock it.”

“What?” The world lurched heavily to one side and Sherlock sat on the edge of John's bed, ignoring the ominous creaking from the frame. “You're speaking nonsense.”

“Sherlock.” She was in front of him again, crouching low and forcing him to meet her gaze, “what do you remember about the day Moriarty died?”

Sherlock opened his mouth to say...anything, really, but all that emerged was a sick croak.

“Try,” Mrs. James urged. “Try and remember.”

 _Pain. Sadness. Desperation. Love. John, John, John..._ “Nothing,” he lied, and the pain in his head exploded.

  


The Lido was cold still. Sherlock wore his suit this time, but trailed his fingers in the water. The distant figures from before were so far away now, they were barely dark smudges on the horizon. Somewhere, a dull tapping noise sounded, like metal against tile, but Sherlock couldn't be bothered to look for the source. Mrs. James was there, he knew without looking, because he could smell the tannic sharpness of tea and a faint, medicinal tang that seemed to follow her wherever she went. At least, so he had found. “Can't you deduce it, Sherlock?” she asked, drawing his attention up and over to the lifeguard stand. “Can't you figure out what's going on in your funny old head?”

“I am ill-dressed for a swim,” he answered, flippancy falling flat, echoing in the air around them. “Why are you wearing that?”

Mrs. James looked down at her lumpy oatmeal jumper and khaki slacks with the sharp creases. “It's comfortable.”

“It's John's.”

“Mmmm.” She tilted her face up towards the cold, bright sun and went still.

“Why was his gun left? He ransacked his own room, after... But he left his gun,” Sherlock murmured, aware of Mrs. James' keen attention despite her apparent doze. “He wouldn't leave it, not if he was leaving of his own will. He was kidnapped... Mycroft!”

Mrs. James sighed loudly, waving down Sherlock as he leapt to his feet, nearly oversetting himself into the cold pool. “No, Sherlock, Mycroft has nothing to do with this. And John didn't leave his gun. You put it there.”

Sherlock wanted to howl, to scream and tear the damnedable sun from the sky. “I must have been drugged,” he finally suggested. “This is all a hallucination!”

Mrs. James smiled thinly. “Warmer.”

  


221 B wasn't any warmer than it had been before, but the sun's glare was not as bad. Sherlock could smell the Lido on his suit, the taint of chlorine reminding him of John, of a Semtex vest... “How long ago?”

“Think, Sherlock,” Mrs. James called from the kitchen, over the din of a teakettle's whistle that sounded like a whirring machine. “You're not well, and you need to rest.”

“Why do you keep telling me that? I loathe repetition!”

“Then why do you keep going to Hampstead Heath, when you know what will happen?”

Mrs. James peered around the edge of the kitchen door, and, for a moment, Sherlock's breath caught in his chest. She was familiar, had been since first sight, and now he knew why. His mother's eyes, his grandmother's hands, Mrs. Hudson's hair, body, John's clothes... “Because,” he said slowly, rising to his feet, “I have to, don't I?”

“Not really,” Mrs. James smiled.

“James. The Scottish form of James is Hamish.”

She laughed. “Clever, aren't you? Quite brilliant, when you're able.”

“John...”

Mrs. James turned away and walked towards the fireplace. “If I was?”

“How...”

“You're not dead, Sherlock, if that's what you're wondering. But it's a near-thing. You tried to help your friends...those you love...”

Sherlock felt the absence of pain keenly, the lack of it sending him gasping and gagging as his world shifted again. “I missed.”

Mrs. James nodded. “You missed. The lorry wasn't where it was supposed to be. A copper made the drive move up a few feet, to get into the right zone. You missed and hit your head on the edge of the lorry's trailer, Sherlock.”

“I'm not dead.”

“You're not well, Sherlock,” Mrs. James repeated, laying the familiar ( _Grandmere Vernet, I miss you, I miss your hands and their scars from the berry bushes at your house in Burgundy_ ) hands atop his. “You saved them. Saved us. But you need to rest now.”

“John. John, stop this,” Sherlock muttered, voice thick. “I know it's you. Why are you wearing them? Why are you hiding?”

A familiar smile and Mrs. James was no more. John knelt before him, hands his own, atop Sherlock's, gripping so hard it made Sherlock hiss between clenched teeth. “So you would listen, you daft git. I couldn't get you to pay attention any other way.”

“How are you here?” Sherlock turned his hands palms-up, laced his fingers with John in a way that was unthinkable before. “If I'm not dead, if...John?”

John shook his head. “It is a near thing, Sherlock. Three weeks, you've been like this. For two, I've been with you.”

“How?”

“And here I thought that you loathed repetition,” John teased. “Accident. Mostly. I fell, tumbled down those damned stairs outside my room. I tore it apart, I cleaned my gun, and I fell. I must admit... I thought it might be a good thing. Because, frankly, I can't be me without you.”

“John, stop.”

“Shut up and listen, Sherlock. Just...just for a moment, alright? Neither of us are dead. Not now, anyway. And if you go on without me, I'll never forgive you. Not when I owe you a chinning for your stunt off Bart's.”

Sherlock hesitated a moment before giving in to a weak chuckle. “What do we do?”

“Stop going to the Lido, for one. It's cold as fuck there. But look, here we are, yeah? Found one another. You know me, I know you. We're us again. So let's...let's try, okay?”

“Try?”

“To wake up, Sherlock. I know you hear the machines sometimes. The whirring blood pressure cuff. The voices from the corridors. I hear them, too.” John's smile grew forced. “We have to try, Sherlock.”

Sherlock nodded, slowly. “If...if I can't...”

“Then I won't.”

“Promise me you'll try, John, even if I can't.”

“Don't make me, Sherlock. Please.”

Sherlock couldn't agree, couldn't nod. He merely squeezed John's fingers and sighed. “I'll try, John. For you.”

“You're brilliant when you want to be, Sherlock. Now... let's try. You've been sleeping so hard, I'm sure you'll be awake for the rest of the year after this.”

Sherlock did nod, then, and closed his eyes. The cold was fading, the light was dimming to a reasonable level, and John's fingers were gone from his grasp. In the distance, a laugh caught on a current and teased at his hearing. The sharp and tannic smell of tea ( _industrial strenth hospital swill_ ) teased his nostrils. Somewhere, just past his sleep, John was waiting. He couldn't disappoint him.


End file.
